Boholano families of Carcar

The Boholanos

It did seem so out-of-the-blue, to break the discovery to them like that, but there was no going around it. So, when informed of the fact of their Boholano origin, except for the relatively newer arrivals — the Escobido (Anda) and Lofranco (Inabanga) families, to cite two — most of the descendants of these Boholano families expressed genuine astonishment and virtually all of them didn’t know anymore that their forebears had come from Bohol. That may not really be surprising since some of these families have been in Carcar for some 200 years—6 to 8 generations.

Some ask back why there are no people in Bohol with their surnames. Good question. But, the answer may be relatively easy.

These families had already been in Carcar for some decades when the Claveria decree for surnames was implemented. As a result, they received surnames assigned for Carcar, and apparently not the ones given to their main family back in Bohol. So, except for the members of the family who migrated to Bohol from Carcar (after Claveria), that’s why there are no Aleonars walking around in Bohol.

Actually, at the time of the decree, the Boholanos could have explained to the implementers that they were from Bohol and wished to have the same surname as their main family back home. And the Claveria decree would have allowed that because it’s spelled out in the decree itself that known family members should have the same surname—because that was the rationale in the first place. But we can speculate on all sorts of reasons why these never turned out: They didn’t know, or had no contact with, the main family anymore; the decree was not yet fully implemented in Bohol, or even, that they didn’t want to be identified with the old family anymore, and so on.

But where in Bohol? Except for very few exceptions, Carcar church records did not name the individual towns in Bohol. They just say either natural de distrito de Bohol, de provincia de Bohol, or just natural de Bohol. And that is the reason why my own Aleonar family tree has hit a dead-end. As well as most other Boholano-Carcar families, too, it goes without saying.

The Aldemita family had a mayor of Carcar in Abundio Aldemita, as was my own contemporary Severino Escobido Jr. Troadio Galicano became a revolutionary general and later Senator of the land. Primitivo Sato was a congressman, too.

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The fifth column (record) is the oldest record I’ve seen of the family, although surely there should be records I’ve not seen or have not recognized as involving them, mostly due to the difficulty of identifying pre-Claveria individuals by their names then. Again, abbreviations used for book records are: B – bautismos (baptisms), C – casamientos (weddings) and E – entierros (burials).

Responses

You are very good on tracing the bloodline. I wonder if you can trace where “Narvios” family name came from. All I knew Osmena , Dumdom ( if my spelling is correct) is one of the bloodline and they came from Carcar or Sangat San Fernando. Good Luck!!!!!